15 ms·

My wife has worked in the 'enforcing building codes' sector of engineering for her entire career. And it's so frustrating to watch. Everyone - everyone - is ce

by mabbo 4y ago

My wife has worked in the 'enforcing building codes' sector of engineering for her entire career. And it's so frustrating to watch. Everyone - everyone - is certain that the codes are all overzealous and their little thing needs an exception. Politicians get elected promising to 'get rid of the red tape'. And then an event occurs and we learn why these building codes exist. Like workplace safety rules, they are written in the blood of the dead. But given time, the events the preceded their writing gets forgotten. I've never seen any of these buildings fall down, so why do we need so many rules to prevent buildings from falling down? They just make it more expensive! Those greedy bureaucrats and building officials just want to prevent development!

conanbatt 4y ago
It cuts both ways. What about the homeless person dying in the cold because he can't afford shelter due to sky high building requirements - is that included in the building code enforcement rules?
- biggieshellz 4y ago
  That's more due to exclusionary zoning than building codes. There is no reason why we couldn't build, for instance, a boarding house under modern building codes, which would create more affordable housing on the low end. The reason that doesn't get built is that the zoning doesn't allow it.
  - xxpor 4y ago
    That's partially true, but it's really a combo of both. Things like dual staircase requirements, elevator size requirements, and sprinkler requirements make it extremely expensive to build any sort of housing. A recent affordable building in SF cost over $1 million per unit. That's completely unsustainable.
    - mschuster91 4y ago
      > Things like dual staircase requirements, elevator size requirements, and sprinkler requirements make it extremely expensive to build any sort of housing. And you want and need precisely that in a house with fluctuating occupants of which a high percentage will have some sort of mental health issue. Cutting corners on boarding houses will lead to fire catastrophes.
      - kqr 4y ago
        > Cutting corners on boarding houses will lead to fire catastrophes. Nobody denies this. The question is whether said fire catastrophes really claim more lives than homelessness and wintering on the street. (Obviously fire catastrophes are a bigger PR problem and get more media attention, but is that really the appropriate metric for human suffering?)
        mschuster91 4y ago
        They don't, but fire catastrophes are one of the most gruesome ways to die - and worse, a fire can always spread around and endanger even more people. There are reasons why fire codes are among the oldest laws in humanity.
        pvaldes 4y ago
        A good advice is to remember that in case of fire what kills people most of the times, is the smoke. Having extinguishers -and- breathing bottles could help. Maybe there is room for designing a new product that would act as two in one?.
      - xxpor 4y ago
        No but here's the thing: for all of those regulations, the US still has more fire deaths than most of Europe. So they're not working anyway! https://twitter.com/MarketUrbanism/status/1608825332412583938 https://twitter.com/MarketUrbanism/status/160882533241258393...
  - mschuster91 4y ago
    > The reason that doesn't get built is that the zoning doesn't allow it. The problem is not just zoning. A boarding house simply doesn't generate noticeable income compared to standard residential housing, and with exploding land prices it simply makes no sense financially to cater to poor people.
    - fragmede 4y ago
      If only there were some sort of organization that didn't need make a profit and wasn't "run like a business". One that everyone gave money to, for the benefit of all society, to make things better all, but especially for the lowest on the totem pole. If only such an organization existed! It could be in charge of governing the people, and the people could choose who runs it with some sort of choosen-ing procedure.
  - wongarsu 4y ago
    Or just regular medium density housing, like say 4-story 8 unit buildings. The stuff that makes up the majority of the housing stock in most Western countries, but seems impossible to build in most of the US due to zoning.
  - jmole 4y ago
    Setback, minimum square footage, minimum parking are all part of “building codes”, and can be used to enforce zoning and restrict development without sounding as political as “zoning”.
    - kube-system 4y ago
      And those can be safety issues too.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- toiletfuneral 4y ago
  [dead]
- Waterluvian 4y ago
  I don't think I've seen a case where the local government wants to build more housing but, gosh, they're just too expensive. It's usually NIMBYism or just general disinterest in a "non-sexy" political issue.
  - moonchrome 4y ago
    This is entirely a "rich parts of the west" kind of a thing - and has nothing to do with Turkey
    - Waterluvian 4y ago
      I think the earthquake is a standalone counter-argument to not wanting proper safety standards. Of the remaining buildings, how many are to be condemned as unsafe? I'm not sure what the homelessness problem is in Turkey, but I imagine it's now far worse.
  - conanbatt 4y ago
    Government does not build housing at all.
    - fragmede 4y ago
      Maybe where you are, but in other parts of the world (eg Singapore), the government does!
- giantrobot 4y ago
  > What about the homeless person dying in the cold because he can't afford shelter due to sky high building requirements - is that included in the building code enforcement rules? That's ridiculous. There's a hundred different issues causing a homeless person to die on the street. Building code regulations are way down that fucking list of somewhat barely related causes.
- r_hoods_ghost 4y ago
  That's not because of building codes. That's because of people who don't believe in helping their fellow man through, oh I don't know, paying taxes, supporting the welfare state, paying living wages etc.
  - commandlinefan 4y ago
    > don't believe in helping their fellow man Well, ok, since you started it - how much do you, personally, donate to homeless shelters and food banks? You have a lot of discretionary income to do so since your taxes are lower than you appear that you would like them to be.
    - fragmede 4y ago
      Do you? If not, the SF Marin food bank would love your help! As little as a $20 one time donation would be appreciated. If you have an excess of time, in person volunteering is also deeply appreciated. Spoiler alert: Unfortunately, no matter how much money or time you give to this organization, or similar, the ills of capitalism inflicted on the poorest residents in the area won't be solved. I still donate anyway though. https://donate.sfmfoodbank.org/page/32140/donate/1 https://donate.sfmfoodbank.org/page/32140/donate/1
    - ornornor 4y ago
      Parent was talking about taxes, not quite the same as donating.
    - cguess 4y ago
      These shouldn't be supported by charity, thus the welfare state. It should be a burden put on all tax payers so that help can be provided beyond just what I feel like donating to. That's literally the point of taxes, and arguing that they should be higher isn't negated just because I personally don't donate to charities. It should be society as a whole (while given a progressive tax rate).
    - mrguyorama 4y ago
      I should not have to donate a single penny to a charity to end homelessness. The US is a rich as fuck country, and has every ability to end poverty, up to and including increasing taxes for well off people like me. Am I really supposed to believe that we could build an entire cargo ship every 3 days out of 18 shipyards in 1942, but we somehow can't build a million simple and dirt cheap homes?
droopyEyelids 4y ago
Seems like it'd be smart to have a footnote or reference to the tragedy that informed the code on each section instead of allowing everything to be forgotten every couple years
- fsniper 4y ago
  Law needs Multiline comments!
- bcrosby95 4y ago
  For stuff like this, if you live in the region, you probably already know. Large earthquakes don't exactly happen every day. For example, if you want to get behind the "whys" of codes like this in CA, just look at: northridge earthquake, loma prieta earthquake, long beach earthquake, and the 1906 earthquake.
- layer8 4y ago
  That reminds me of how the C standard had a separate “rationale” document [0]. [0] https://www.open-std.org/jtc1/sc22/wg14/www/C99RationaleV5.10.pdf https://www.open-std.org/jtc1/sc22/wg14/www/C99RationaleV5.1...
- ChainOfFools 4y ago
  This is sometimes done in a folk social engineering hack sort of way, by nicknaming certain pieces of legislation after those (usually children) whose tragedy inspired them. Amber's law, Megan's Law etc. But even this strategy already reached oversaturation. People just need to be more responsible, or else have fewer actions encoded as as rights instead of privileges.
- dsfyu404ed 4y ago
  The problem is that a hell of a lot of your foot notes are going to be "we want X but X is subjective so we're going to force you to do Y which can be objectively measured using Z, nobody has died or got injured yet but doing it this way prevents us from having any responsibility for judgement calls" If the code says no more than two wires under a staple you'll still have the intended effect if you put two small wires and one big one under a staple sized for the big one. But that requires judgement to get right so they just say two wires only.
mschuster91 4y ago
> Like workplace safety rules, they are written in the blood of the dead. Or fire codes. Related off-topic reminder, in the hope it may save one life one day: please use this comment as a reminder to check upon the status of your smoke alarms, carbon monoxide alarms and fire extinguisher. At the very least every room where people sleep in should have a smoke alarm and every room with a furnace (boiler, oven, kitchen, ...) a smoke and CO alarm. They must not be painted over, and their batteries be regularly replaced. Each story of a house should have at least one extinguisher rated for classes A and B (solid and liquid combustibles), kitchens additionally a class F extinguisher (DO NOT EVER use a water/foam extinguisher on a fat fire). Fire extinguishers should be inspected by a licensed professional every two years and must not be used again after breaking the seal without a check-over by a licensed professional. Also, have your building's electrical lines checked at least once a decade and after each major rework if they are up to code, and regularly check appliance cables for damage. Electrical defects account (in Germany) for roughly a third of all fires.
- dmd 4y ago
  > Fire extinguishers should be inspected by a licensed professional every two years I (in an affluent US east coast suburb) called my fire dept's non-emergency line to ask about this once a few years ago, and they told me this isn't something they do. So who does it?
  - bonzini 4y ago
    Whoever sells extinguishers, I think.
  - toast0 4y ago
    Go to any commercial building and find their fire extinguishers. They'll have a tag on them indicating when they were inspected and who did it. Or look up 'fire extinguisher servicing [your metro area name]' or check with your local commercial occupancy inspectors department.
  - mschuster91 4y ago
    Yeah, fire departments don't do that here in Germany as well... legal requirement is that the licensed professional has a license according to the norm DIN 14 406 pt. 4. I had a quick google about the situation in the US, turns out there seem to be zero requirements on who does an inspection [1] - utterly mind-boggling. In your case I'd search for a company that is certified by NICET [2]. [1] https://www.nfpa.org/news-and-research/publications-and-media/blogs-landing-page/nfpa-today/blog-posts/2020/10/30/guide-to-fire-extinguisher-inspection-testing-and-maintenance https://www.nfpa.org/news-and-research/publications-and-medi... [2] https://www.nicet.org/certification-programs/electrical-and-mechanical-systems/inspection-and-testing-of-water-based-systems/ https://www.nicet.org/certification-programs/electrical-and-...
wnevets 4y ago
Reminds me so much of the vaccine "debate", "no one gets polio anymore, why do I need to get the polio vaccine?"
- RetpolineDrama 4y ago
  I mean that is kind of the _ultimate_ goal isn't it? -Vaccinate the population, eliminate the disease in humans -Eliminate the disease in any of its natural reservoirs Once you're certain it's gone why continue vaccination? There's cost to that and those resources can then be dedicated to "active" diseases (perhaps with the instructions for that vaccine archived somehow).
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - soperj 4y ago
    Polio isn't eliminated though. Measles especially is nuts to skip. We don't vaccinate for smallpox because it has been eliminated.
    - cguess 4y ago
      And if you're in the military you do get vaccinated for smallpox still.
      - soperj 4y ago
        I'm guessing that's specifically to deal with the possibility of bio-warfare?
        cguess 4y ago
        Correct
  - anonymouskimmer 4y ago
    Yes, that's the point. But you continue on until the disease is eradicated, not just until a person's individual anecdote is that they don't know of anyone who has had it recently. That's the point when vaccination can safely cease.
notch898a 4y ago
[flagged]
- ColonelBlimp 4y ago
  I'd be interested to know more about the direct correlation between increased cost of housing due to enforcing building codes and homelesness. Can you share links to studies or articles about that? Thanks.
  - notch898a 4y ago
    Here's an example https://www.ktnv.com/13-investigates/officials-in-nevada-demolish-tiny-homes-built-for-homeless-in-las-vegas https://www.ktnv.com/13-investigates/officials-in-nevada-dem... You're welcome!
    - endemic 4y ago
      > The parcel is zoned for a single-family home. That seems to be about zoning, not building codes.
      - notch898a 4y ago
        It's a bit of both. The article specifically mentions the CODE specifies minimum sq ft. You could still put a tiny "house" down if that house had met code. The code is the reason why it was unworkable even for a single unit on a plot. (and in any case, since the topic was code enforcement, article states "North Las Vegas Code enforcement took action" )
- esalman 4y ago
  Wow.
- phkahler 4y ago
  There are a lot of things driving up housing costs. Some of those are also driving wage disparity.
commandlinefan 4y ago
> it's so frustrating I feel the same way developing software - the only thing that ever matters, and has ever mattered (at least since I started developing software in 1992) is "meeting the date". Whatever corners can be cut to make the date are cut, and then the thing breaks in fairly predictable ways because corners were cut. It's maddeningly infuriating and I'm not even dealing with people's lives here. I can't even imagine having to put up with this attitude when people could actually die.
- cm2187 4y ago
  Not sure what you are equating this to in software, but if it is security vulnerabilities, incompetence has probably more to do with it than time pressure. It takes about the time to write a parametrised query than to concatenate your strings.
  - ornornor 4y ago
    The corners that are cut are often around automated testing, security, best practices. And it adds up, so if nothing is done right then it’s faster to keep doing it wrong than rearchitect or abstract everything so you can have a clean implementation. Honestly, I haven’t been working that long (about a decade) but this general attitude from PHBs calling the shots in software makes me count the months until I can retire early and never write code for money again. It’s just soul sucking to fight everyone on this and then fight again when overtime is needed to add more bandaids to the resulting abomination because the date won’t be met.
    - fragmede 4y ago
      I don't know your situation, but I'd encourage you to find one that isn't "soul sucking" that you can actually live with. Life's too short to spend it in a job you hate, especially if you have an in demand skillset.
    - pmarreck 4y ago
      Yeah, I'd advise looking for work elsewhere, it's not supposed to be like that and I guarantee you that you could find something better
marcosdumay 4y ago
Well, the code is always overzealous (never met an exception), and the smaller the house the more overzealous it is. If it wasn't, we would have a much easier time persecuting people that breaks it, and much more public sympathy for large culprits that actually have much fewer (relatively to their capacity) strings over then than any random person. The same applies to fire codes.
- reaperducer 4y ago
  Well, the code is always overzealous It's only overzealous to people trying to cut corners. It's never overzealous to the people who are killed or hurt.
  - mhb 4y ago
    There are people who are killed or hurt by overzealous code who you don't know about.
    - mcguire 4y ago
      Can you name some?
      - mhb 4y ago
        There are finite resources. Resources used to comply with overzealous regulations are not spent in other ways. Some of these other ways save lives. Pick whichever ones you want - additional smoke detectors, pollution reduction, etc., etc. It's ridiculous to advocate arbitrary, putative, safety enhancing measures without an argument about why that way of spending resources is better than many of the other alternatives.
        fragmede 4y ago
        In absence of "overzealous" regulation, a property developer could use some of the money they were going to spend on the job on, say, additional smoke detectors to make the place safer, but given NO requirements to spend money on something like smoke detectors, and that fact that it isn't their home or office they're working on, it seems far more likely excess money would go to other things. Like a bigger truck, video games, a sports car, trips to Europe/America/Asia, alcohol, cocaine, strippers (women who take their clothes off for money, not the work tool used to separate wire from insulation). Which are all things that one could choose to do with their own money, but I'd rather that regulations cause the money to go towards making houses safer so they don't burn down, or fail in an earthquake/tornado/hurricane/winter and kill somebody.
ouid 4y ago
autocorrelated risk + insensitivity to scale. If 100 people died every week of building code violations in that time people would care more
catiopatio 4y ago
An increasing problem locally (Boulder) is the use of the permitting process to push high-cost climate goals on home owners, leading to them skipping permitting and inspection entirely. Here, you’re required to choose at least three expensive improvements from a set of eight (iirc), ranging from relatively cheap (electric vehicle charger) to very expensive (rooftop solar). My home was built in the 1970s, the bathrooms had mold and had to be gutted, and the place was in desperate need of a remodel just to be livable. I already have rooftop solar and an electrical vehicle charger, but that’s not enough. I was expected to spend roughly an extra $40k — on top of a $120k remodel — adding additional features and replacing perfectly good portions of my home to meet Boulder’s climate goals. I can’t afford that, but my house isn’t livable as-is. As a result, I’m having a bunch of work done without permitting or inspection. I hate it, but that’s the Faustian bargain people choose when government tries to leverage safety regulations as a stick to enforce expensive, non-safety related ends.
- nerpderp82 4y ago
  We have the same problem in Telluride. I have to pay an extra 20k to get an upgraded circuit to charge my Rivian when I am already under the limit.
  - kube-system 4y ago
    If it costs you 20k to upgrade a circuit, your story is missing some important details.
    - treis 4y ago
      This sort of thing can easily spiral to needing a new main power line due to the increased amp requirements.
      - kube-system 4y ago
        Yes. But the price of those combined should still be nearly an order of magnitude cheaper than $20k. $20k is "gut and rewire everything in an expensive metro area" kind of money.
hammock 4y ago
>Everyone - everyone - is certain that the codes are all overzealous and their little thing needs an exception. Politicians get elected promising to 'get rid of the red tape'. And then an event occurs and we learn why these building codes exist. Like workplace safety rules, they are written in the blood of the dead. Can't it be both? A more restrictive code does not solve the problem of construction scams. Enforcing a useful code, might
toast0 4y ago
> Everyone - everyone - is certain that the codes are all overzealous and their little thing needs an exception. Politicians get elected promising to 'get rid of the red tape'. And then an event occurs and we learn why these building codes exist. > Like workplace safety rules, they are written in the blood of the dead. Some of the rules are, but some of the rules aren't. When code calls for a maximum distance between electrical outlets, that's partially for convenience, and partly because of unsafe practices with extension cords, so there's some blood there, but if you miss the mark by a foot, it's not disasterous. Uniform application of some rules without considerations for cost or practicality is foolish. For example, where I live, with my size house, any permitted remodeling triggers a requirement to retrofit fire sprinklers, despite the fact that I have a well which likely couldn't supply said fire sprinklers in a reasonable manner --- especially if a fire resulted in electricity being cut off, or was caused by unsafe heating choices when utility electricity was out of service (this is a common cause of house fires as I understand it). You could mitigate that with a high mounted water tank, but that's not actually required, might require substantial engineering to ensure the weight of the water and tank doesn't exceed the structure's weight bearing capacity, and would add significant maintenance to ensure the condition of the tank such that it did not leak and cause major damage to the structure. Oh, and how are you supposed to get such a tank into an attic like that anyway? Structural requirements tend to be more likely to be written from experience though. And earthquakes and high winds have a way of striking everywhere. TR is known to be seismically active, so cutting corners on earthquake safety is a worse risk/cost tradeoff than in places where earthquakes are rare.
- _greim_ 4y ago
  > When code calls for a maximum distance between electrical outlets, that's partially for convenience, and partly because of unsafe practices with extension cords, so there's some blood there, but if you miss the mark by a foot, it's not disasterous. I mean, it could be disastrous, couldn't it? That foot could be the threshold of someone saying "Aw screw it, I'll just use my parent's frayed extension cord from the 70s."
  - arp242 4y ago
    Designing to prevent common mistakes – even if they're stupid mistakes – is a good idea, but you can't idiot-proof absolutely everything. At some point personal responsibility starts. I think this is somewhere before "I'll use a frayed extension cord from the 70s" – even a child can understand that's not a good idea.
jseliger 4y ago
Simultaneously: https://www.theurbanist.org/2023/02/07/one-stairway-is-enough-to-reach-housing-heaven/ https://www.theurbanist.org/2023/02/07/one-stairway-is-enoug... There are building codes that are designed to increase authentic safety, and those that are actually trying to achieve other ends, like decreasing the supply of available housing, via the claim of "safety." "Safetyism" is everywhere: https://freddiedeboer.substack.com/p/safetyism-is-the-water-in-which-we https://freddiedeboer.substack.com/p/safetyism-is-the-water-...
- m0llusk 4y ago
  In America lots of people have died in single stairway buildings. The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire created a political dynamic where buildings are expected to have dedicated fire escape stairs and that remains a strong social contract to this day. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triangle_Shirtwaist_Factory_fire https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triangle_Shirtwaist_Factory_fi...
  - pas 4y ago
    maybe since then there is a better local optimum in this problem-solution space, hm? fire safety engineering is a very respectable field, mandating a particular implementation instead of a required safety level is the opposite to good long-term policy.
    - m0llusk 4y ago
      Indeed, that seems likely. But there are political and social realities to consider. If what is optimal is something along the lines of: "In case of fire, if there is a fire escape then use that, otherwise shelter in place" then a conditional that must be evaluated ends up embedded in the emergency plan. This is a much bigger problem than is immediately obvious. If everyone knows that in case of a fire one should exit through the fire escape stairs then this leads not only simplification of emergency procedures but also their enforcement. In America seeing a fire escaped blocked or chained up is cause for immediate alarm and enforcement with the general public being perfectly capable of basic inspection themselves. Having an extremely simple plan for fire safety can help increase reliability because everyone knows and understands the plan, can contribute to enforcement, and execute the plan when there is an emergency. Engineering optimization not only does generate conflicts with social and political realities but in fact almost inevitably does so.
dsfyu404ed 4y ago
>It's so frustrating. You know what's frustrating? Seeing someone who's clearly got enough exposure to building code and similar types of workplace requirements to know they're being misleading do it anyway because they know it's what the audience wants to hear. A huge fraction of code is not written in blood. A huge fraction of those exception requests are legitimate from a "performance of the thing in question" system. Much of the specific verbiage and the specific requirements in code come from a desire to free people like your wife from having to make and be responsible for the outcome of judgement calls. Nobody's house ever burnt down because the wire staples were spaced 1" too far apart. It's just that a line had to be drawn somewhere because inspectors can't be expected to make judgement calls on such minutia at scale. If clipboard warriors cared to explain this it to the people they'd catch less flak.
- mrguyorama 4y ago
  My very blue collar brother in law became a code enforcement employee for his rich as fuck town for a while. The ONLY people who bitch about building codes are the ones who are CLEARLY out of compliance with code, have been for decades, and have been getting a pass due to nepotism previously, and then they have the time and spite to go to town office meetings and publicly bitch about their previous privileged status and wanting to keep that stupid level of privilege. Everyone else is mostly in compliance, trying to keep compliant, and will definitely get a pass from an enforcement official because it's clearly not a problem. If you don't act like a dick, you will almost always get a pass if it's not a clear violation that probably would fuck someone over in the future. My father is a completely self taught and self employed contractor for the exact same area. Code compliance is so clear, simple, and easy that he considers it a rubber stamp process and has never complained about it, while he happily complains about spending $400 a year to keep his business properly licensed in the state, while he refuses to increase his prices to keep up with the gouging local contractors are able to do because of extremely high demand.
  - dsfyu404ed 4y ago
    A rich town where everyone just afford compliance with everything all the time isn't very illustrative. I bet nobody there drives cars on bald tires or pays their babysitter off the books either. In places where money doesn't grow on trees harder decisions have to be made. Situations like "do I hire a real electrician to install my heat pump and get forced to bring my panel up to current code at great expense or do I hire someone to just install the heat pump on a cash basis or do I replace my existing system like for like" become more common. I agree code is stupid simple if you're building cookie cutter stuff. It can get very, very, annoying when you're dealing with systems that have N generations of changes and/or are trying to be minimally invasive. Would you rather take a hole saw to the main beam of someone's house or have a sink drain that's a hair too flat for a portion of it's run?
AlbertCory 4y ago
Since I live in the Bay Area which does have earthquakes, we have very strict building codes. Your water heater has to be secured to the wall, as one simple example, and I've personally heard of houses catching fire because of the water heater falling over. That said: there are always "grandfathered" buildings which were built before the latest codes; unreinforced masonry, for example. What politician wants to tell the owner, "hey, sorry, you've got to tear that down" ? So, aside from builders ignoring codes, I wonder how many of the buildings in Turkey were built before earthquake-proofing was required?
- ElectricalUnion 4y ago
  I wonder at this point if the Japanese real state model is the correct one: * Building code is constantly updated, and this makes old built homes undesirable - building itself is worth 0 yen after around 7 years; * Shrinking population means most real estate is actually empty/abandoned on low demand areas; * Very disaster prone area so most buildings are either new (and build code compliant) or constantly being tested for disaster resistence; * Few invest on real estate speculation as the return-on-investment is horrible.
- poulsbohemian 4y ago
  > I wonder how many of the buildings in Turkey were built before earthquake-proofing was required? I'm no expert, but when I was in Turkey in 2010 I took pictures of soft clay hollow bricks that were being used in new construction for the bulk of the building. You've likely seen pictures of similar bricks as they are used all over the world, but they are as fragile as eggshells.
- terminalcommand 4y ago
  Surprisingly many of the buildings were new. Even 1 month old projects collapsed. While old buildings constructed upto code remained unscathed. They built the buildings without adhering to code. They get a project approved, do whatever they want (steal materials, build another floor, decide not to dig a foundation) and sell the projects advertising that the buildings are upto code. As we have a highly corrupt government, they pay their bribes and get the building approved. Also, the building inspectors are private companies, they approve buildings without ever going on site. Even newly built government buildings such as hospitals, airports collapsed!! Even those buildings were built with bribes :(. Corruption killed us here :(.
erie 4y ago
In Turkey it is different, even the minimum requirements were bypassed with exemptions due to government's contractors friendly policies, and Erdoğan has recently been promising "the biggest social housing project in the history of the Turkish republic'. Most houses in Turkey are of inferior quality, I visited Antalya and the thin walls and roofs of buildings and rooms of the flats barely had privacy in terms of sound proofing within it and with the neighboring flats. The same was the rule up north, and from my discussions with some locals inferior quality and low standard was not only in building materials and standards but in several other sectors.
jeffbee 4y ago
Engineering requirements for buildings in America come in two forms: code-conforming buildings that can be built by anyone, and whatever you want as long as a qualified engineer has signed off on it. When looked at from that perspective, it's clear that the code exists to make the construction business cheaper and more efficient. Nothing about the code will prevent you from building anything you really want. You just need engineers.
rekabis 4y ago
“Red tape is painted with the blood of innocents who died before those regulations existed” - probably the best way to state it in a pithy manner.
beambot 4y ago
Code overzealousness isn't the issue... it's months-long delays in permitting & rampant understaffing of city inspectors that are required to inspect every little thing causing construction to start & stop every 2-3 days.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- mrguyorama 4y ago
  Aw man, if only it was widely agreed that we should adequately fund government, and that properly funding, staffing, and paying for government services could result in fewer problems. What? Democrats are socialist? Okay I guess we will keep having the same problems then.
  - ehvatum 4y ago
    Aw man, if only Democrat super-majority California were not the absolute worst for construction permit hell, you’d have a point.
kneebonian 4y ago
Good to know that if I ever need to switch jobs out of Info Sec I can get a job in building code enforcement.
terminalcommand 4y ago
In Turkey, these buildings were constructed by building companies close to government. They paid their bribes and constructed the buildings with making every shortcut. What was Turkey's response? The governor of Hatay ordered to demolish the building construction control authority's archive (archive with signed and stamped construction projects, floor studies etc.), with the documents in it (i.e. to bury all evidence). The building is a one-floored archive and did not suffer any earthquake damage. Luckily a group of lawyers found out and stopped the destruction halfway. Now, with the pressure from the press, the heads of the building companies are arrested one by one. Imagine the level of corruption when the governor orders to demolish the archive holding evidence without telling anyone :).
- rhn_mk1 4y ago
  Could you link to any sources? This sounds big.
  - mrtksn 4y ago
    It is all over the social media and serious journalists picked up the story. Here is the video of the lawyer(Bedia Büyükgebiz) live vlogging from the location, which went viral: https://twitter.com/haskologlu/status/1624433879154102275 https://twitter.com/haskologlu/status/1624433879154102275 The official statement is that all these paperwork and test results are already digitised but the lawyers say that the originals still need to be kept around for some time and destroyed under a strict protocol so to ensure that the digitised versions are indeed faithful to the originals(running the bulldozers over the building with the documents is not part of the protocol). Also, the city still severely lacks heavy machinery for the rescue efforts and people find it suspicious why would the government would commission these to demolish a one story building, even if the building was damaged. Journalists on the ground say that they haven't heard of any other building being demolished for safety reasons.
- notlukesky 4y ago
  Building companies are close to the government everywhere. Try getting permits without access to the city council or mayor. Turkey is a major faultline (and most of the northern Mediterranean) and seems to constantly have earthquakes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_earthquakes_in_Turkey https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_earthquakes_in_Turkey In the same area of the earthquakes now (the size of the UK) there was an earthquake in 115 AD that killed 260 thousand people: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/115_Antioch_earthquake https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/115_Antioch_earthquake
riedel 4y ago
This is really difficult business and I recently ended in a dispute with my civil engineer wife because I wanted to move a shelf towards the center of the room. She is I guess right reminding me that trial and error is not a good strategy in her business. I always think, that a 120 year old building somehow should not collapse due to my books. However, when it comes to earthquake standars over time it really gets even stranger. I live in a region in Germany that recently got an 'upgrade' on earth quake forces after recent surveys. However, regulators still do not enforce new standards. So my wife has to recommend all her customers to adopt new standards, but tells them in the same sentence that it is not yet required. With rising construction costs nobody choses to. So we are all waiting cynically for the predicted major earthquake so that we are on the same standard again. Some by design, some empirically proven.
Self-Perfection 4y ago
>But given time, the events the preceded their writing gets forgotten. I've never seen any of these buildings fall down, so why do we need so many rules to prevent buildings from falling down? That is the problem with how the rules are written. The rules should have a context to reasons why these particular rule was employed. I imagine something like an wiki page with lots of links.
interestica 4y ago
> Like workplace safety rules, they are written in the blood of the dead. I mean this is highlighting a problem. Could the rules have a heavily annotated and multi-layered version that shows the related precedents?
systemvoltage 4y ago
It's also important to consider that not everything is sane in the regulations book. Just look at your local HOA and then combine it with "my job relies on writing regulations" conflict of interest. That's not to strawman, without regulations, the world would be an extremely unsafe place. Just keep rational about how far to push in the name of public safety. We can always do more, but at some point we completely stagnate any development what so ever. Everything is dangerous, the question really is quantifying and analyzing acceptable dangers. The safest thing is to build absolutely nothing.
TomK32 4y ago
> Like workplace safety rules, they are written in the blood of the dead. Absolutely true I'm guilty of binging a few youtube videos on aviation and engineering failures over the winter, as well as videos on road infrastructure (slowly, as a cyclist, I understand that motorists are not just idiots but idiots on roads built by idiots) and I'm pretty sure there are youtubers that produce content on construction failures that lead to this or that code. For example the Knickerbocker Theater was code compliant but it still failed and the codes updated afterwards, rescue operations were also a bit of a mess https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N4P7qHjp3nE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N4P7qHjp3nE or the collapse of a parking deck in Canada that also showed how important nearby rescue services are when salt has eaten through your concrete and steel https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fxLtWiJ8uVg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fxLtWiJ8uVg or this building that had extra load added to the roof while the columns underneath were not built as intended https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fxLtWiJ8uVg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fxLtWiJ8uVg Maybe educating the future building owners with content like this will show then that there are a lot of dangers known and unknown?

by mabbo 4y ago

conanbatt 4y ago

It cuts both ways. What about the homeless person dying in the cold because he can't afford shelter due to sky high building requirements - is that included in the building code enforcement rules?

biggieshellz 4y ago
That's more due to exclusionary zoning than building codes. There is no reason why we couldn't build, for instance, a boarding house under modern building codes, which would create more affordable housing on the low end. The reason that doesn't get built is that the zoning doesn't allow it.
- xxpor 4y ago
  That's partially true, but it's really a combo of both. Things like dual staircase requirements, elevator size requirements, and sprinkler requirements make it extremely expensive to build any sort of housing. A recent affordable building in SF cost over $1 million per unit. That's completely unsustainable.
  - mschuster91 4y ago
    > Things like dual staircase requirements, elevator size requirements, and sprinkler requirements make it extremely expensive to build any sort of housing. And you want and need precisely that in a house with fluctuating occupants of which a high percentage will have some sort of mental health issue. Cutting corners on boarding houses will lead to fire catastrophes.
    - kqr 4y ago
      > Cutting corners on boarding houses will lead to fire catastrophes. Nobody denies this. The question is whether said fire catastrophes really claim more lives than homelessness and wintering on the street. (Obviously fire catastrophes are a bigger PR problem and get more media attention, but is that really the appropriate metric for human suffering?)
      - mschuster91 4y ago
        They don't, but fire catastrophes are one of the most gruesome ways to die - and worse, a fire can always spread around and endanger even more people. There are reasons why fire codes are among the oldest laws in humanity.
        pvaldes 4y ago
        A good advice is to remember that in case of fire what kills people most of the times, is the smoke. Having extinguishers -and- breathing bottles could help. Maybe there is room for designing a new product that would act as two in one?.
    - xxpor 4y ago
      No but here's the thing: for all of those regulations, the US still has more fire deaths than most of Europe. So they're not working anyway! https://twitter.com/MarketUrbanism/status/1608825332412583938 https://twitter.com/MarketUrbanism/status/160882533241258393...
- mschuster91 4y ago
  > The reason that doesn't get built is that the zoning doesn't allow it. The problem is not just zoning. A boarding house simply doesn't generate noticeable income compared to standard residential housing, and with exploding land prices it simply makes no sense financially to cater to poor people.
  - fragmede 4y ago
    If only there were some sort of organization that didn't need make a profit and wasn't "run like a business". One that everyone gave money to, for the benefit of all society, to make things better all, but especially for the lowest on the totem pole. If only such an organization existed! It could be in charge of governing the people, and the people could choose who runs it with some sort of choosen-ing procedure.
- wongarsu 4y ago
  Or just regular medium density housing, like say 4-story 8 unit buildings. The stuff that makes up the majority of the housing stock in most Western countries, but seems impossible to build in most of the US due to zoning.
- jmole 4y ago
  Setback, minimum square footage, minimum parking are all part of “building codes”, and can be used to enforce zoning and restrict development without sounding as political as “zoning”.
  - kube-system 4y ago
    And those can be safety issues too.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
toiletfuneral 4y ago
[dead]
Waterluvian 4y ago
I don't think I've seen a case where the local government wants to build more housing but, gosh, they're just too expensive. It's usually NIMBYism or just general disinterest in a "non-sexy" political issue.
- moonchrome 4y ago
  This is entirely a "rich parts of the west" kind of a thing - and has nothing to do with Turkey
  - Waterluvian 4y ago
    I think the earthquake is a standalone counter-argument to not wanting proper safety standards. Of the remaining buildings, how many are to be condemned as unsafe? I'm not sure what the homelessness problem is in Turkey, but I imagine it's now far worse.
- conanbatt 4y ago
  Government does not build housing at all.
  - fragmede 4y ago
    Maybe where you are, but in other parts of the world (eg Singapore), the government does!
giantrobot 4y ago
> What about the homeless person dying in the cold because he can't afford shelter due to sky high building requirements - is that included in the building code enforcement rules? That's ridiculous. There's a hundred different issues causing a homeless person to die on the street. Building code regulations are way down that fucking list of somewhat barely related causes.
r_hoods_ghost 4y ago
That's not because of building codes. That's because of people who don't believe in helping their fellow man through, oh I don't know, paying taxes, supporting the welfare state, paying living wages etc.
- commandlinefan 4y ago
  > don't believe in helping their fellow man Well, ok, since you started it - how much do you, personally, donate to homeless shelters and food banks? You have a lot of discretionary income to do so since your taxes are lower than you appear that you would like them to be.
  - fragmede 4y ago
    Do you? If not, the SF Marin food bank would love your help! As little as a $20 one time donation would be appreciated. If you have an excess of time, in person volunteering is also deeply appreciated. Spoiler alert: Unfortunately, no matter how much money or time you give to this organization, or similar, the ills of capitalism inflicted on the poorest residents in the area won't be solved. I still donate anyway though. https://donate.sfmfoodbank.org/page/32140/donate/1 https://donate.sfmfoodbank.org/page/32140/donate/1
  - ornornor 4y ago
    Parent was talking about taxes, not quite the same as donating.
  - cguess 4y ago
    These shouldn't be supported by charity, thus the welfare state. It should be a burden put on all tax payers so that help can be provided beyond just what I feel like donating to. That's literally the point of taxes, and arguing that they should be higher isn't negated just because I personally don't donate to charities. It should be society as a whole (while given a progressive tax rate).
  - mrguyorama 4y ago
    I should not have to donate a single penny to a charity to end homelessness. The US is a rich as fuck country, and has every ability to end poverty, up to and including increasing taxes for well off people like me. Am I really supposed to believe that we could build an entire cargo ship every 3 days out of 18 shipyards in 1942, but we somehow can't build a million simple and dirt cheap homes?

droopyEyelids 4y ago

Seems like it'd be smart to have a footnote or reference to the tragedy that informed the code on each section instead of allowing everything to be forgotten every couple years

fsniper 4y ago
Law needs Multiline comments!
bcrosby95 4y ago
For stuff like this, if you live in the region, you probably already know. Large earthquakes don't exactly happen every day. For example, if you want to get behind the "whys" of codes like this in CA, just look at: northridge earthquake, loma prieta earthquake, long beach earthquake, and the 1906 earthquake.
layer8 4y ago
That reminds me of how the C standard had a separate “rationale” document [0]. [0] https://www.open-std.org/jtc1/sc22/wg14/www/C99RationaleV5.10.pdf https://www.open-std.org/jtc1/sc22/wg14/www/C99RationaleV5.1...
ChainOfFools 4y ago
This is sometimes done in a folk social engineering hack sort of way, by nicknaming certain pieces of legislation after those (usually children) whose tragedy inspired them. Amber's law, Megan's Law etc. But even this strategy already reached oversaturation. People just need to be more responsible, or else have fewer actions encoded as as rights instead of privileges.
dsfyu404ed 4y ago
The problem is that a hell of a lot of your foot notes are going to be "we want X but X is subjective so we're going to force you to do Y which can be objectively measured using Z, nobody has died or got injured yet but doing it this way prevents us from having any responsibility for judgement calls" If the code says no more than two wires under a staple you'll still have the intended effect if you put two small wires and one big one under a staple sized for the big one. But that requires judgement to get right so they just say two wires only.

mschuster91 4y ago

> Like workplace safety rules, they are written in the blood of the dead. Or fire codes. Related off-topic reminder, in the hope it may save one life one day: please use this comment as a reminder to check upon the status of your smoke alarms, carbon monoxide alarms and fire extinguisher. At the very least every room where people sleep in should have a smoke alarm and every room with a furnace (boiler, oven, kitchen, ...) a smoke and CO alarm. They must not be painted over, and their batteries be regularly replaced. Each story of a house should have at least one extinguisher rated for classes A and B (solid and liquid combustibles), kitchens additionally a class F extinguisher (DO NOT EVER use a water/foam extinguisher on a fat fire). Fire extinguishers should be inspected by a licensed professional every two years and must not be used again after breaking the seal without a check-over by a licensed professional. Also, have your building's electrical lines checked at least once a decade and after each major rework if they are up to code, and regularly check appliance cables for damage. Electrical defects account (in Germany) for roughly a third of all fires.

dmd 4y ago
> Fire extinguishers should be inspected by a licensed professional every two years I (in an affluent US east coast suburb) called my fire dept's non-emergency line to ask about this once a few years ago, and they told me this isn't something they do. So who does it?
- bonzini 4y ago
  Whoever sells extinguishers, I think.
- toast0 4y ago
  Go to any commercial building and find their fire extinguishers. They'll have a tag on them indicating when they were inspected and who did it. Or look up 'fire extinguisher servicing [your metro area name]' or check with your local commercial occupancy inspectors department.
- mschuster91 4y ago
  Yeah, fire departments don't do that here in Germany as well... legal requirement is that the licensed professional has a license according to the norm DIN 14 406 pt. 4. I had a quick google about the situation in the US, turns out there seem to be zero requirements on who does an inspection [1] - utterly mind-boggling. In your case I'd search for a company that is certified by NICET [2]. [1] https://www.nfpa.org/news-and-research/publications-and-media/blogs-landing-page/nfpa-today/blog-posts/2020/10/30/guide-to-fire-extinguisher-inspection-testing-and-maintenance https://www.nfpa.org/news-and-research/publications-and-medi... [2] https://www.nicet.org/certification-programs/electrical-and-mechanical-systems/inspection-and-testing-of-water-based-systems/ https://www.nicet.org/certification-programs/electrical-and-...

wnevets 4y ago

Reminds me so much of the vaccine "debate", "no one gets polio anymore, why do I need to get the polio vaccine?"

RetpolineDrama 4y ago
I mean that is kind of the _ultimate_ goal isn't it? -Vaccinate the population, eliminate the disease in humans -Eliminate the disease in any of its natural reservoirs Once you're certain it's gone why continue vaccination? There's cost to that and those resources can then be dedicated to "active" diseases (perhaps with the instructions for that vaccine archived somehow).
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- soperj 4y ago
  Polio isn't eliminated though. Measles especially is nuts to skip. We don't vaccinate for smallpox because it has been eliminated.
  - cguess 4y ago
    And if you're in the military you do get vaccinated for smallpox still.
    - soperj 4y ago
      I'm guessing that's specifically to deal with the possibility of bio-warfare?
      - cguess 4y ago
        Correct
- anonymouskimmer 4y ago
  Yes, that's the point. But you continue on until the disease is eradicated, not just until a person's individual anecdote is that they don't know of anyone who has had it recently. That's the point when vaccination can safely cease.

notch898a 4y ago

[flagged]

ColonelBlimp 4y ago
I'd be interested to know more about the direct correlation between increased cost of housing due to enforcing building codes and homelesness. Can you share links to studies or articles about that? Thanks.
- notch898a 4y ago
  Here's an example https://www.ktnv.com/13-investigates/officials-in-nevada-demolish-tiny-homes-built-for-homeless-in-las-vegas https://www.ktnv.com/13-investigates/officials-in-nevada-dem... You're welcome!
  - endemic 4y ago
    > The parcel is zoned for a single-family home. That seems to be about zoning, not building codes.
    - notch898a 4y ago
      It's a bit of both. The article specifically mentions the CODE specifies minimum sq ft. You could still put a tiny "house" down if that house had met code. The code is the reason why it was unworkable even for a single unit on a plot. (and in any case, since the topic was code enforcement, article states "North Las Vegas Code enforcement took action" )
esalman 4y ago
Wow.
phkahler 4y ago
There are a lot of things driving up housing costs. Some of those are also driving wage disparity.

commandlinefan 4y ago

> it's so frustrating I feel the same way developing software - the only thing that ever matters, and has ever mattered (at least since I started developing software in 1992) is "meeting the date". Whatever corners can be cut to make the date are cut, and then the thing breaks in fairly predictable ways because corners were cut. It's maddeningly infuriating and I'm not even dealing with people's lives here. I can't even imagine having to put up with this attitude when people could actually die.

cm2187 4y ago
Not sure what you are equating this to in software, but if it is security vulnerabilities, incompetence has probably more to do with it than time pressure. It takes about the time to write a parametrised query than to concatenate your strings.
- ornornor 4y ago
  The corners that are cut are often around automated testing, security, best practices. And it adds up, so if nothing is done right then it’s faster to keep doing it wrong than rearchitect or abstract everything so you can have a clean implementation. Honestly, I haven’t been working that long (about a decade) but this general attitude from PHBs calling the shots in software makes me count the months until I can retire early and never write code for money again. It’s just soul sucking to fight everyone on this and then fight again when overtime is needed to add more bandaids to the resulting abomination because the date won’t be met.
  - fragmede 4y ago
    I don't know your situation, but I'd encourage you to find one that isn't "soul sucking" that you can actually live with. Life's too short to spend it in a job you hate, especially if you have an in demand skillset.
  - pmarreck 4y ago
    Yeah, I'd advise looking for work elsewhere, it's not supposed to be like that and I guarantee you that you could find something better

marcosdumay 4y ago

Well, the code is always overzealous (never met an exception), and the smaller the house the more overzealous it is. If it wasn't, we would have a much easier time persecuting people that breaks it, and much more public sympathy for large culprits that actually have much fewer (relatively to their capacity) strings over then than any random person. The same applies to fire codes.

reaperducer 4y ago
Well, the code is always overzealous It's only overzealous to people trying to cut corners. It's never overzealous to the people who are killed or hurt.
- mhb 4y ago
  There are people who are killed or hurt by overzealous code who you don't know about.
  - mcguire 4y ago
    Can you name some?
    - mhb 4y ago
      There are finite resources. Resources used to comply with overzealous regulations are not spent in other ways. Some of these other ways save lives. Pick whichever ones you want - additional smoke detectors, pollution reduction, etc., etc. It's ridiculous to advocate arbitrary, putative, safety enhancing measures without an argument about why that way of spending resources is better than many of the other alternatives.
      - fragmede 4y ago
        In absence of "overzealous" regulation, a property developer could use some of the money they were going to spend on the job on, say, additional smoke detectors to make the place safer, but given NO requirements to spend money on something like smoke detectors, and that fact that it isn't their home or office they're working on, it seems far more likely excess money would go to other things. Like a bigger truck, video games, a sports car, trips to Europe/America/Asia, alcohol, cocaine, strippers (women who take their clothes off for money, not the work tool used to separate wire from insulation). Which are all things that one could choose to do with their own money, but I'd rather that regulations cause the money to go towards making houses safer so they don't burn down, or fail in an earthquake/tornado/hurricane/winter and kill somebody.

ouid 4y ago

autocorrelated risk + insensitivity to scale. If 100 people died every week of building code violations in that time people would care more

catiopatio 4y ago

An increasing problem locally (Boulder) is the use of the permitting process to push high-cost climate goals on home owners, leading to them skipping permitting and inspection entirely. Here, you’re required to choose at least three expensive improvements from a set of eight (iirc), ranging from relatively cheap (electric vehicle charger) to very expensive (rooftop solar). My home was built in the 1970s, the bathrooms had mold and had to be gutted, and the place was in desperate need of a remodel just to be livable. I already have rooftop solar and an electrical vehicle charger, but that’s not enough. I was expected to spend roughly an extra $40k — on top of a $120k remodel — adding additional features and replacing perfectly good portions of my home to meet Boulder’s climate goals. I can’t afford that, but my house isn’t livable as-is. As a result, I’m having a bunch of work done without permitting or inspection. I hate it, but that’s the Faustian bargain people choose when government tries to leverage safety regulations as a stick to enforce expensive, non-safety related ends.

nerpderp82 4y ago
We have the same problem in Telluride. I have to pay an extra 20k to get an upgraded circuit to charge my Rivian when I am already under the limit.
- kube-system 4y ago
  If it costs you 20k to upgrade a circuit, your story is missing some important details.
  - treis 4y ago
    This sort of thing can easily spiral to needing a new main power line due to the increased amp requirements.
    - kube-system 4y ago
      Yes. But the price of those combined should still be nearly an order of magnitude cheaper than $20k. $20k is "gut and rewire everything in an expensive metro area" kind of money.

hammock 4y ago

toast0 4y ago

> Everyone - everyone - is certain that the codes are all overzealous and their little thing needs an exception. Politicians get elected promising to 'get rid of the red tape'. And then an event occurs and we learn why these building codes exist. > Like workplace safety rules, they are written in the blood of the dead. Some of the rules are, but some of the rules aren't. When code calls for a maximum distance between electrical outlets, that's partially for convenience, and partly because of unsafe practices with extension cords, so there's some blood there, but if you miss the mark by a foot, it's not disasterous. Uniform application of some rules without considerations for cost or practicality is foolish. For example, where I live, with my size house, any permitted remodeling triggers a requirement to retrofit fire sprinklers, despite the fact that I have a well which likely couldn't supply said fire sprinklers in a reasonable manner --- especially if a fire resulted in electricity being cut off, or was caused by unsafe heating choices when utility electricity was out of service (this is a common cause of house fires as I understand it). You could mitigate that with a high mounted water tank, but that's not actually required, might require substantial engineering to ensure the weight of the water and tank doesn't exceed the structure's weight bearing capacity, and would add significant maintenance to ensure the condition of the tank such that it did not leak and cause major damage to the structure. Oh, and how are you supposed to get such a tank into an attic like that anyway? Structural requirements tend to be more likely to be written from experience though. And earthquakes and high winds have a way of striking everywhere. TR is known to be seismically active, so cutting corners on earthquake safety is a worse risk/cost tradeoff than in places where earthquakes are rare.

_greim_ 4y ago
> When code calls for a maximum distance between electrical outlets, that's partially for convenience, and partly because of unsafe practices with extension cords, so there's some blood there, but if you miss the mark by a foot, it's not disasterous. I mean, it could be disastrous, couldn't it? That foot could be the threshold of someone saying "Aw screw it, I'll just use my parent's frayed extension cord from the 70s."
- arp242 4y ago
  Designing to prevent common mistakes – even if they're stupid mistakes – is a good idea, but you can't idiot-proof absolutely everything. At some point personal responsibility starts. I think this is somewhere before "I'll use a frayed extension cord from the 70s" – even a child can understand that's not a good idea.

jseliger 4y ago

Simultaneously: https://www.theurbanist.org/2023/02/07/one-stairway-is-enough-to-reach-housing-heaven/ https://www.theurbanist.org/2023/02/07/one-stairway-is-enoug... There are building codes that are designed to increase authentic safety, and those that are actually trying to achieve other ends, like decreasing the supply of available housing, via the claim of "safety." "Safetyism" is everywhere: https://freddiedeboer.substack.com/p/safetyism-is-the-water-in-which-we https://freddiedeboer.substack.com/p/safetyism-is-the-water-...

m0llusk 4y ago
In America lots of people have died in single stairway buildings. The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire created a political dynamic where buildings are expected to have dedicated fire escape stairs and that remains a strong social contract to this day. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triangle_Shirtwaist_Factory_fire https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triangle_Shirtwaist_Factory_fi...
- pas 4y ago
  maybe since then there is a better local optimum in this problem-solution space, hm? fire safety engineering is a very respectable field, mandating a particular implementation instead of a required safety level is the opposite to good long-term policy.
  - m0llusk 4y ago
    Indeed, that seems likely. But there are political and social realities to consider. If what is optimal is something along the lines of: "In case of fire, if there is a fire escape then use that, otherwise shelter in place" then a conditional that must be evaluated ends up embedded in the emergency plan. This is a much bigger problem than is immediately obvious. If everyone knows that in case of a fire one should exit through the fire escape stairs then this leads not only simplification of emergency procedures but also their enforcement. In America seeing a fire escaped blocked or chained up is cause for immediate alarm and enforcement with the general public being perfectly capable of basic inspection themselves. Having an extremely simple plan for fire safety can help increase reliability because everyone knows and understands the plan, can contribute to enforcement, and execute the plan when there is an emergency. Engineering optimization not only does generate conflicts with social and political realities but in fact almost inevitably does so.

dsfyu404ed 4y ago

>It's so frustrating. You know what's frustrating? Seeing someone who's clearly got enough exposure to building code and similar types of workplace requirements to know they're being misleading do it anyway because they know it's what the audience wants to hear. A huge fraction of code is not written in blood. A huge fraction of those exception requests are legitimate from a "performance of the thing in question" system. Much of the specific verbiage and the specific requirements in code come from a desire to free people like your wife from having to make and be responsible for the outcome of judgement calls. Nobody's house ever burnt down because the wire staples were spaced 1" too far apart. It's just that a line had to be drawn somewhere because inspectors can't be expected to make judgement calls on such minutia at scale. If clipboard warriors cared to explain this it to the people they'd catch less flak.

mrguyorama 4y ago
My very blue collar brother in law became a code enforcement employee for his rich as fuck town for a while. The ONLY people who bitch about building codes are the ones who are CLEARLY out of compliance with code, have been for decades, and have been getting a pass due to nepotism previously, and then they have the time and spite to go to town office meetings and publicly bitch about their previous privileged status and wanting to keep that stupid level of privilege. Everyone else is mostly in compliance, trying to keep compliant, and will definitely get a pass from an enforcement official because it's clearly not a problem. If you don't act like a dick, you will almost always get a pass if it's not a clear violation that probably would fuck someone over in the future. My father is a completely self taught and self employed contractor for the exact same area. Code compliance is so clear, simple, and easy that he considers it a rubber stamp process and has never complained about it, while he happily complains about spending $400 a year to keep his business properly licensed in the state, while he refuses to increase his prices to keep up with the gouging local contractors are able to do because of extremely high demand.
- dsfyu404ed 4y ago
  A rich town where everyone just afford compliance with everything all the time isn't very illustrative. I bet nobody there drives cars on bald tires or pays their babysitter off the books either. In places where money doesn't grow on trees harder decisions have to be made. Situations like "do I hire a real electrician to install my heat pump and get forced to bring my panel up to current code at great expense or do I hire someone to just install the heat pump on a cash basis or do I replace my existing system like for like" become more common. I agree code is stupid simple if you're building cookie cutter stuff. It can get very, very, annoying when you're dealing with systems that have N generations of changes and/or are trying to be minimally invasive. Would you rather take a hole saw to the main beam of someone's house or have a sink drain that's a hair too flat for a portion of it's run?

AlbertCory 4y ago

Since I live in the Bay Area which does have earthquakes, we have very strict building codes. Your water heater has to be secured to the wall, as one simple example, and I've personally heard of houses catching fire because of the water heater falling over. That said: there are always "grandfathered" buildings which were built before the latest codes; unreinforced masonry, for example. What politician wants to tell the owner, "hey, sorry, you've got to tear that down" ? So, aside from builders ignoring codes, I wonder how many of the buildings in Turkey were built before earthquake-proofing was required?

ElectricalUnion 4y ago
I wonder at this point if the Japanese real state model is the correct one: * Building code is constantly updated, and this makes old built homes undesirable - building itself is worth 0 yen after around 7 years; * Shrinking population means most real estate is actually empty/abandoned on low demand areas; * Very disaster prone area so most buildings are either new (and build code compliant) or constantly being tested for disaster resistence; * Few invest on real estate speculation as the return-on-investment is horrible.
poulsbohemian 4y ago
> I wonder how many of the buildings in Turkey were built before earthquake-proofing was required? I'm no expert, but when I was in Turkey in 2010 I took pictures of soft clay hollow bricks that were being used in new construction for the bulk of the building. You've likely seen pictures of similar bricks as they are used all over the world, but they are as fragile as eggshells.
terminalcommand 4y ago
Surprisingly many of the buildings were new. Even 1 month old projects collapsed. While old buildings constructed upto code remained unscathed. They built the buildings without adhering to code. They get a project approved, do whatever they want (steal materials, build another floor, decide not to dig a foundation) and sell the projects advertising that the buildings are upto code. As we have a highly corrupt government, they pay their bribes and get the building approved. Also, the building inspectors are private companies, they approve buildings without ever going on site. Even newly built government buildings such as hospitals, airports collapsed!! Even those buildings were built with bribes :(. Corruption killed us here :(.

erie 4y ago

In Turkey it is different, even the minimum requirements were bypassed with exemptions due to government's contractors friendly policies, and Erdoğan has recently been promising "the biggest social housing project in the history of the Turkish republic'. Most houses in Turkey are of inferior quality, I visited Antalya and the thin walls and roofs of buildings and rooms of the flats barely had privacy in terms of sound proofing within it and with the neighboring flats. The same was the rule up north, and from my discussions with some locals inferior quality and low standard was not only in building materials and standards but in several other sectors.

jeffbee 4y ago

Engineering requirements for buildings in America come in two forms: code-conforming buildings that can be built by anyone, and whatever you want as long as a qualified engineer has signed off on it. When looked at from that perspective, it's clear that the code exists to make the construction business cheaper and more efficient. Nothing about the code will prevent you from building anything you really want. You just need engineers.

rekabis 4y ago

“Red tape is painted with the blood of innocents who died before those regulations existed” - probably the best way to state it in a pithy manner.

beambot 4y ago

Code overzealousness isn't the issue... it's months-long delays in permitting & rampant understaffing of city inspectors that are required to inspect every little thing causing construction to start & stop every 2-3 days.

deleted 4y ago
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mrguyorama 4y ago
Aw man, if only it was widely agreed that we should adequately fund government, and that properly funding, staffing, and paying for government services could result in fewer problems. What? Democrats are socialist? Okay I guess we will keep having the same problems then.
- ehvatum 4y ago
  Aw man, if only Democrat super-majority California were not the absolute worst for construction permit hell, you’d have a point.

kneebonian 4y ago

Good to know that if I ever need to switch jobs out of Info Sec I can get a job in building code enforcement.

terminalcommand 4y ago

In Turkey, these buildings were constructed by building companies close to government. They paid their bribes and constructed the buildings with making every shortcut. What was Turkey's response? The governor of Hatay ordered to demolish the building construction control authority's archive (archive with signed and stamped construction projects, floor studies etc.), with the documents in it (i.e. to bury all evidence). The building is a one-floored archive and did not suffer any earthquake damage. Luckily a group of lawyers found out and stopped the destruction halfway. Now, with the pressure from the press, the heads of the building companies are arrested one by one. Imagine the level of corruption when the governor orders to demolish the archive holding evidence without telling anyone :).

rhn_mk1 4y ago
Could you link to any sources? This sounds big.
- mrtksn 4y ago
  It is all over the social media and serious journalists picked up the story. Here is the video of the lawyer(Bedia Büyükgebiz) live vlogging from the location, which went viral: https://twitter.com/haskologlu/status/1624433879154102275 https://twitter.com/haskologlu/status/1624433879154102275 The official statement is that all these paperwork and test results are already digitised but the lawyers say that the originals still need to be kept around for some time and destroyed under a strict protocol so to ensure that the digitised versions are indeed faithful to the originals(running the bulldozers over the building with the documents is not part of the protocol). Also, the city still severely lacks heavy machinery for the rescue efforts and people find it suspicious why would the government would commission these to demolish a one story building, even if the building was damaged. Journalists on the ground say that they haven't heard of any other building being demolished for safety reasons.
notlukesky 4y ago
Building companies are close to the government everywhere. Try getting permits without access to the city council or mayor. Turkey is a major faultline (and most of the northern Mediterranean) and seems to constantly have earthquakes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_earthquakes_in_Turkey https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_earthquakes_in_Turkey In the same area of the earthquakes now (the size of the UK) there was an earthquake in 115 AD that killed 260 thousand people: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/115_Antioch_earthquake https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/115_Antioch_earthquake

riedel 4y ago

This is really difficult business and I recently ended in a dispute with my civil engineer wife because I wanted to move a shelf towards the center of the room. She is I guess right reminding me that trial and error is not a good strategy in her business. I always think, that a 120 year old building somehow should not collapse due to my books. However, when it comes to earthquake standars over time it really gets even stranger. I live in a region in Germany that recently got an 'upgrade' on earth quake forces after recent surveys. However, regulators still do not enforce new standards. So my wife has to recommend all her customers to adopt new standards, but tells them in the same sentence that it is not yet required. With rising construction costs nobody choses to. So we are all waiting cynically for the predicted major earthquake so that we are on the same standard again. Some by design, some empirically proven.

Self-Perfection 4y ago

>But given time, the events the preceded their writing gets forgotten. I've never seen any of these buildings fall down, so why do we need so many rules to prevent buildings from falling down? That is the problem with how the rules are written. The rules should have a context to reasons why these particular rule was employed. I imagine something like an wiki page with lots of links.

interestica 4y ago

> Like workplace safety rules, they are written in the blood of the dead. I mean this is highlighting a problem. Could the rules have a heavily annotated and multi-layered version that shows the related precedents?

systemvoltage 4y ago

It's also important to consider that not everything is sane in the regulations book. Just look at your local HOA and then combine it with "my job relies on writing regulations" conflict of interest. That's not to strawman, without regulations, the world would be an extremely unsafe place. Just keep rational about how far to push in the name of public safety. We can always do more, but at some point we completely stagnate any development what so ever. Everything is dangerous, the question really is quantifying and analyzing acceptable dangers. The safest thing is to build absolutely nothing.

TomK32 4y ago

> Like workplace safety rules, they are written in the blood of the dead. Absolutely true I'm guilty of binging a few youtube videos on aviation and engineering failures over the winter, as well as videos on road infrastructure (slowly, as a cyclist, I understand that motorists are not just idiots but idiots on roads built by idiots) and I'm pretty sure there are youtubers that produce content on construction failures that lead to this or that code. For example the Knickerbocker Theater was code compliant but it still failed and the codes updated afterwards, rescue operations were also a bit of a mess https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N4P7qHjp3nE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N4P7qHjp3nE or the collapse of a parking deck in Canada that also showed how important nearby rescue services are when salt has eaten through your concrete and steel https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fxLtWiJ8uVg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fxLtWiJ8uVg or this building that had extra load added to the roof while the columns underneath were not built as intended https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fxLtWiJ8uVg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fxLtWiJ8uVg Maybe educating the future building owners with content like this will show then that there are a lot of dangers known and unknown?